A very large segment of American society responds to anyone suffering through difficult times with “They should have made better choices”.

This is a tried and true method to resist any empathy, or generosity, another’s tragedy might inspire. It goes something like this:

Too poor to pay the rent? Must have spent that money on fripperies. Oh you didn’t? Your job doesn’t pay enough? Well get a better job that pays better. Get a degree! You can’t afford a degree? Well work and go to school! You need help with paying for childcare while you’re working and going to school, so you can get that better paying job to pay the rent? Well if you can’t afford children, maybe you should have thought about that before you had children! You were married when you had children? Well where’s their father? Oh your husband lost his life in the war overseas? Well you should have thought about that before you married someone in the military! Back in my day, our Gunny told us that if the U.S. Government wanted us to have wives we would have been issued one. Your husband should have known that he couldn’t afford a family on his pay. If he wanted a family he should have gotten a job with better pay before he had kids. He was in the military so he could go to college? …

This circle can continue endlessly. The final outcome of this conversation is rarely spoken aloud. I’m not sure if the person pushing the better choices narrative is fully cognizant of what the final choice would be, because they usually withdraw before the end. The end being, why didn’t you choose a better family to be born into?

Generosity of spirit costs us nothing except, if we’re lucky, our cherished stereotypes. It’s the part where we listen. It’s where we spend some time. It’s when we suspend our mind’s tendency to ignore a world that we see, rather than the world we have created with our assumptions.

We’ve all made choices. We’ve been making choices since we were born. All of our choices have been limited by both us, and forces outside of us. How can any one of us know what the better choice would have been for someone else? We’re only going by the results of a series of choices that have led a person to a certain moment in time. Not only were the choices of that one person involved, but also the choices of thousands, if not millions, of other people, also led to the situation existing in the way it did, right then. If we think about it at all, we know this. Even the purveyor of this false narrative that an individual can have isolated choices while within a society, has to know better.

If they know better, and if they’re older than a toddler, then why do they dismiss the difficulties of others? I’m not sure. I think it’s probably different for each person who does this. But I am often reminded of a quote, “There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.” or more commonly, “There but for the grace of God, go I”. We are all one step away from tragedy. We know it and we really don’t like thinking about it. Rather than facing how little of the narrative is in our control, we turn away. We separate ourselves from those who mirror our fears back to us, not realizing that we can mitigate our own nightmares by being generous. When we reach out to help others, we cement the idea, the belief, in our own hearts that we are not alone and that people can, and do, help each other.

The circle of “should have made better choices” is the thought pattern of the speaker given voice. If we change our thought patterns we can change the world around us. Add generosity to the cynicism and the cynical voice in our heads will get so uncomfortable it might just shut up.